Wedding – the subject of a $15 million U.S. bounty – turned himself into authorities in Mexico City and is now being held in California
Days before Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder who became U.S. authorities describe as a “modern day Pablo Escobar” turned himself in at the American embassy in Mexico City, an entry showed up in the federal court docket, a sealed manual filing.
Now that Ryan Wedding, 44, is in federal custody, headed for a scheduled initial appearance in an Orange County courtroom Monday afternoon, that entry points to a negotiation between the purported narco kingpin who prosecutors say sits atop a murderous transnational drug trafficking operation and the investigators who offered up $15 million for his capture.
In the weeks leading up to Wedding’s high-profile surrender, investigators were hitting the wanted man where it hurts: flipping his top lieutenant, snatching up his $40 million motorcycle collection, seizing his $14 million Mercedes-Benz, and rounding up the women in his life
Members of what U.S. officials call Ryan Wedding’s sprawling narco empire were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department Credit: Department of Treasury
FBI Director Kash Patel personally flew to Mexico City to greet Wedding, and was among the phalanx of law enforcement crowding the government plane that escorted the Canadian national to Ontario, California, on Friday. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell was on the tarmac alongside Akil Davis, the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles FBI field office, and other federal and Canadian police officials who have been chasing Wedding around the world as he remained a fugitive on charges in his native country and in California’s Central District.
While on the lam, Wedding allegedly got plastic surgery to evade facial recognition software and ordered the assassination of a former criminal compatriot who had agreed to help the feds take down his sprawling narco empire. Wedding offered up $5 million for anyone who could whack the witness, Jonathan Acebo-Garcia, and an unlikely coterie of hitmen and helpers planned the sophisticated execution that took place in Jan. 2025 at a crowded restaurant in a Medellín, Colombia, mall.
Ryan Wedding had a coterie of unusual alleged criminal compatriots around him Credit: Graphic by Lisa Lewis
“He is a modern-day El Chapo. He is a modern-day Pablo Escobar, and he thought he could evade justice,” Patel said over the roar of the airplane, where a beefy Wedding had disembarked in a black puffer vest and a John Geiger x MLB x New Era collab baseball hat that the designer says had not yet been released to the public. Wedding had a knack for collecting exclusive items, like the collection of MotoGP racing motorcycles that had been ridden by some of the sport’s best racers. He also had expensive artworks by one such racer Valentino Rossi, which were seized by the FBI along with his Olympic medals.
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Over the summer, Wedding had taken a shirtless selfie, which the FBI got its hands on and released, all part of the enormous pressure the U.S. put on Mexican officials to bring the accused narco to justice. A total of 36 people connected to Wedding’s operation have also been indicted as part of a takedown codenamed Operation Giant Slalom.
After Wedding’s surrender, a photo appeared on social media that purports to show Wedding, decked out in head-to-toe Louis Vuitton couture, standing alongside another Gucci-clad fugitive targeted in his case, Gennandii Bilonog, who remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Bilonog remains at large.
Wedding’s court appearance was moved to the Santa Ana federal courthouse on Friday because of electrical problems at the DTLA courtroom, officials said.